01:36 pm - Shalom what?Like many good rants, this one begins with the following thought:I freaking hate Logan Airport.So I'm a little early (15-30 minutes) to pick up Robin, and I put my car in the section marked "Pick up and Drop off of Passengers only!" I'm there with a small group of other cars waiting to pick people up from Terminal B. This place is a bit of an exile, between between the two halves of terminal B. It has no covering (and it's raining, of course) and pretty no one would want to be there unless you were waiting for someone. So I pull out a book and start reading. Next thing I know, some jackass has some siren blaring (this is Boston, I don't even look up) eventually though, there's a horn behind me and I do look up. Said jackass is a MassTransit cop and his purpose, apparently, is to chase away people so they can't pick up passengers. Freaking brilliant. I'm clearly IN the car. There's a zero chance of me hanging around to blow something up, when if I'd wanted to be a bomber, I'd be a bomber IN the freaking terminal, or failing that, at least in front of the terminal instead off to the side, where the best I could do is blow up part of a road with 4 cars on it and a bit of barrier.Anyway, of course their purpose is to scary you into paying their damn exorbitant parking fees, and I wasn't going to, but then I thought, you know, if I did, I could go inside and meet her when she gets to baggage, and that would be okay too. Although I still I freaking hate Logan.So anyway, I did get Robin, and we went out and did some shopping before going to Shalom Hunan Bejing: where the indifferent quality of the food is surpassed only by the incompetence of the wait staff. Maybe my mistake was in trying something new rather than going with my old favorites, but the food did nothing for me. We started off by having to beg for the chinese noodles every other table had. The waitress seemed stunned (and annoyed) by the request. We ordered the pu pu platter while we were waiting for hoppie. It has different elements than the previous one. The chicken wings (darn it) and chicken fingers, eggrolls, rangoons, and teriyaki beef stick were the same, but they replaced the scallion pancakes with pan fried ravs, and fried lotus root. The description said it had teriyaki chicken (stick) as well as beef stick, but ours didn't. Those were okay. We had to ask for rav sauce. The chicken wings seem to be even worse than they used to be. It's a different batter and more bony. The lotus root was good, but strange. For dinner we got lo mein, which turns out to be the dish I disliked least, and ma pu tofu, which was really too salty for me to enjoy. I didn't actually try the lemon chicken, so maybe that was better, but it certainly wasn't what we expected, being fried chicken pieces. I know lemon chicken is a bit of a crap shoot anyway, where some places fry it and some don't, but SH used to not fry it, iirc, and now they do, so that was an unexpected surprise.When the waitress brought out the food, she served us fried rice instead of the lo mein we'd ordered and, of course, she was annoyed that we told her that, and that we asked for fresh plates for dinner.

Robin said she enjoyed it, and I hope she did, but I certainly didn't. I was very upset. I may have to try that other vile Chinese place again.Current Mood:crankyCurrent Music: Meat Loaf - If This Is The Last Kiss (Let'

I concur. I fucking hate fucking Logan fucking airport with a fucking passion. Perhaps I'm a bit disenchanted with said airport after traveling there 6 times during the Big Dig and having ramps randomly close, open, appear, and disappear to/from the airport. I'd arrive there on Sunday and have to take a completely different path on Friday because my original path was closed. Grrrrrrrrrrrr.

Marci has grown more annoyed.

She didn't see so irked then, in fact she seemed annoyed at me for saying we had a nasty wait staff. Maybe my negativisty wore off on her. I enjoyed the food well enough, it was hot, I didn't have to cook it and I had good ocompany... I'm easily impresssed. -Robin

It's true

The wait thing irritated me the longer I thought about it. She had so little to do to turn my experience from "ew, way too salty" to "well, not as good as usual, but at least the service was friendly," and she couldn't even be bothered to do it.

Marci has grown more annoyed.

She didn't seem so irked then, in fact she seemed annoyed at me for saying we had a nasty wait staff. Maybe my negativisty wore off on her. I enjoyed the food well enough, it was hot, I didn't have to cook it and I had good ocompany... I'm easily impresssed. -Robin

airports

while in Seattle in spring of 2005, I became enchanted by a feature of their airport: the cellphone pickup area. Cars wait (with active drivers) in the cellphone pickup area, and when called to say that the person they are meeting is at the curb, they drive around and collect them. It's all very civilized.

I've been on the "other" end (and wrote about it): last week I was particularly irked by drivers at Logan who kept idling in the Silver Li(n)e bus stop, and was very thankful when a state policeman came and moved them along. I realize that you weren't blocking a bus stop, but if the policeman was trying to impose equal treatment (and that's a big if!), that could be one reason he moved you along.

Re: airports

Sadly, we're making the assumption that I'm not an asshole. I deliberately and with malice aforethought avoided the spots marked "bus" to wait in a spot marked "pick up" even though it meant waiting in the rain, away from the covered area.

There's absolutely no reason why the two should be treated equally. One obeys signs. One ignores them. 8-)